The present invention relates to enhancements of electronic collaborative processes, and in particular, to the propagation of notifications that serve as “hints” related to activity associated with a corresponding collaborative process.
Electronic mail (email) systems, electronic calendars and electronic to-do lists are quite popular among computer users, both in business settings and for personal use. However, in email systems, a message originator has relatively little visibility as to how a message recipient handles a received message, including when a particular message is opened or viewed, how messages are prioritized, whether messages that require some type of follow-up action are addressed, and so forth. Similarly, it is typically expected that some sort of activity may be required by the recipient of a shared electronic calendar event and/or shared to-do task. Again however, an event or task originator has relatively little visibility as to when the shared event or task is opened or viewed by the recipient. Still further, the originator has little visibility as to whether the recipient has implemented some type of follow-up action, etc.
For messages, events and/or tasks that request that the recipient perform some type of action, the originator and/or recipient must manually take action to track the message, event or task status. For example, the originator may be required to send a follow-up message to the recipient to check on the status of the specific request.